Tag Archives: beta reader

I started reaching out to people to read and review BoK:SoU, some of them just samples and other the entire book, and I got a few responses so far. Because of not having gotten the book edited – a grave mistake which I intended to do to test something I will share later – there were a decent amount of spelling and grammatical mistakes, mostly oversights.

Now here’s the fun part, I’ve been studying quite a bit during the past few years and writing a shit-load of reports. When you edit a dozen pages or so, its easy to peal through each word and make sure it conveys exactly the meaning you want, thus in that case you can reduce such mistakes to none, or a mere few, during an entire paper with little effort.

With creative and long writing, however, it’s not as simple a task as it takes time and is extremely boring, especially when you get to the fifth edit. Naturally, some mistakes here and there sneak in, and naturally you’re overwhelmed with grammar, characters, story development and other aspects of the book.

So that’s why it’s important to get an editor if you’re serious about it. Even better if you get two.

Going back to the grammar mistakes that were picked up by the readers. Just going through the latest edit, in the first chapter, I picked up some debatable mistakes, which you can blame on style or so, and a few complex grammar mistakes, namely the ‘Past Perfect’, which very few people use accurately, especially Americans for some reason.

None of the reviewers picked up a single ‘complex’ tense rule error, let alone a ‘simple’ tense rule error, while they seemed to be enraged by the other simple typos (Eg: leapes instead of leaped). Now I find that ironic; grammar Nazis don’t seem to mind the mistakes in the rules they don’t know!

PS: I am grateful for those who point out the mistakes and only wish that everyone would be as constructively critical. If I conveyed any negative tone during that post please know that I had no such intention.